Advice needed

[Delcides Flávio de Sousa Jr.]

   Hi,

        I'm building a Beowulf cluster ( guess you never heard that before 
:-) and I'd really appreciate some advice on some questions.

1. Is it better to get the fastest CPU or maybe something slower with more 
memory ? 
2. From tutorials, papers and web pages I get the impression that it's better 
to start with less nodes with better hardware, e.g. 

          4 PIV 1.4GHz 512 Mb RAM  versus 8 PIII 700MHz 256 Mb RAM 
	    
( This example is merely illustrative - not wanting to dwell on the issue 
PIII vs. PIV :-)

3. What is the performance penalty on running diskless nodes ? I mean, 
comparing with a full/partial OS install on each node.

4. Could you recommend a good ethernet card/switch ? I've read the page on 
Gigabit and 100Mbps ethernet technology and I'm inclined to adopt the 
DEC "Tulip" model.


Thanks in advance

Delcides F. Sousa Jr.
Institute of Physics - State University of Campinas - Brazil